Associated Press

April 16, 1995|By Senior judge sits atop federal bench and Two of Alabama's most famous civil rights cases were argued before U.S. Judge Seybourn Lynne.

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Pipe in one hand, cane in the other, U.S. District Judge Seybourn H. Lynne owes allegiance to no one other than the president who gave him his job.

That means Lynne is free; Harry Truman died in 1972.

It also means that Lynne, with nearly five decades on the federal bench, is the nation's longest-serving federal judge, according to the Federal Judicial Center in Washington.

At 87, his hearing is fading somewhat and he pauses to recall names, even those from his most famous case - a 1963 integration dispute that precipitated then-Gov. George C. Wallace's ''stand in the school door'' at the University of Alabama.

But Lynne still works in the office five days a week and carries a full load of civil cases.

''I do my own research. I write all of my decisions,'' he says. Until he had hip replacement surgery last fall he also wrote them all in longhand. ''Now,'' he confesses, ''I dictate them.'' But retirement is not even a thought.

''They're going to have to drag me off,'' Lynne said recently.

Federal judges have lifetime appointments but may choose semiretired, or ''senior,'' status at 65, depending on years of service. Lynne took senior status 22 years ago.

The chief federal judge for North Alabama is somewhat awed by Lynne, who regularly hears cases as part of special panels from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

''He still takes really a major caseload, and he takes hard ones,'' said U.S. District Judge Sam Pointer. ''Frequently when we have judges' meetings he can remember cases and details of cases that no one else can.''

Lynne is most at home in his office, a corner suite overlooking the downtown park where civil rights marchers led by Martin Luther King Jr. were attacked by police dogs and blasted with fire hoses in 1963.

In one corner of the room sit bound copies of Auburn University's student newspaper from 1926, when Lynne was editor. On a wall hangs a plaque from the University of Alabama, where Lynne graduated from law school in 1930 and served as an assistant football coach under Wallace Wade.

''At Alabama-Auburn games I sit on my hands,'' said the judge.

Lynne, then 38, was serving as a judge advocate for the Army when he learned of his nomination by Truman in October 1945. He had served eight years as a state court judge in his native Decatur before World War II began.

Sworn in on Jan. 9, 1946, Lynne said he was the only federal judge in Alabama north of Mobile from 1949 to 1953, when a second judge was added in Birmingham.

In 1956, Lynne was the lone dissenter on a three-judge panel that issued a historic civil rights ruling that racial segregation on Montgomery city buses was unconstitutional. Lynne's dissenting opinion said the ''separate but equal'' doctrine still applied in intrastate transportation cases.

But seven years later, on June 5, 1963, Lynne issued his most famous order - one that came down on the other side of the fight for civil rights.

Lynne prohibited Wallace from blocking the admittance of two black students at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Lynne threatened Wallace with a contempt order and possible jail term then presided over days of tense negotiating sessions in which the Kennedy administration and Wallace finally reached a solution.

Sen. Howell Heflin, a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, said Lynne's handling of the situation saved the state untold trouble.

''He let it be known that he wasn't going to stand for any foolishness. . . . He probably prevented a lot of bloodshed,'' Heflin said.